We invite readers to send short stories about the ways in which their lives have been personally blessed by the life and work of priests and religious in our diocese.

By Cathy Tilzey

Years after being part of a team that set up Anaconda Catholic Community, and instrumental in building Pope John XXIII church in Missoula, Father Frank McCormick still believes that the process is “not building parishes but building communities.”

And he has had experience in seven parishes, a diocesan office and at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, where he currently serves as a chaplain, to engrain that belief into his mind.

Father McCormick was born in Butte to two Butte natives, James McCormick and Margaret Coburn. He has a sister, Marguerite Veal, who lives in Meadow, S.D., and a brother, Jim, of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.

He attended St. Joseph Grade School – the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary were great teachers, he said – and graduated from Boys’ Central High School, where Irish Christian Brothers taught him.

That education and his classes at Carroll College started him thinking about a vocation. “It just kind of developed from there,” he said.

He studied theology at St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colo., and also earned a master’s degree in religious education and ministry at Seattle University.

Bishop Raymond G. Hunthausen ordained him June 1, 1968, along with Fathers John Darragh and William Dornbos, at St. Ann Parish in Butte.

Father McCormick said his assignments were mostly different. His first one was as associate pastor at Little Flower Parish, Browning, the summer after ordination, and St. Anthony’s, Missoula, that fall. He also was an assistant at Holy Rosary, Bozeman, starting in 1970, and at St. Mary’s, Helena, 1972. He became co-pastor of St. Mary’s in 1974.

In 1977, he became part of a pastoral team that put together the Anaconda Catholic Community under the direction of Father Jim White. He started coordinating that team in 1983.

His first appointment as a pastor was for Holy Cross Parish, Townsend, in 1985. In addition, he became director of the Diocesan Office of Pastoral Renewal at the Chancery in Helena. “Sharon Hoff and I continued the Renew program” that had started several years before, he explained.

Then he was moved to Missoula’s newest parish, named for Pope John XXIII, and applied what he had learned in Anaconda. He also spent several years in Frenchtown, with its missions in Alberton and Superior, before becoming a hospital chaplain.

“I have just enjoyed so much working with the sick, have learned so much about our vulnerability and fragility,” Father McCormick stated. “People have so many, many needs through the healing of their bodies, minds and spirits. It has been a very spiritual time in my life.”


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 8, August 15, 2008.